TURANDOT Notes from the set designer and director Genesis How many works have had such a long genesis, from their initial concep- tion, until their ;inal form, under which they ;ind themselves into posterity? The year was 633 AD and Turandokht - daughter of King Khosrow Parviz, and sister of Azarmidokht and Purandokht - the most beautiful of the three Per- sian princesses at that time during the Sasian dynasty, had turned into a veritable paradigm of nobility and political stature within her lineage. The name Turan- dokht means, quite literally, “daughter of Turan”, “dohkt" being a contraction of “dokhtar”, or daughter, in Persian. The origin of the Turan people goes back to 1700 BC, and it was comprised mostly of Iranians of the Avestan era. The impor- tance of this people in eastern spirituality is enormous, their biggest legacy being the sacred book of Zoroastrianism, the Avesta, written in Zend. Finding inspiration in the historical ;igure of the legendary princess, one of the greatest poets of Persian epic literature of the 13th century, Nezamı́ Ganyavı́, recants, in his book The Seven Princesses, written circa 1200 AD, the perils of a princess who had sworn to give herself to whomsoever would correctly answer a series of enigmas. Around ;ive hundred years after that, circa 1700 AD, the story of princess Turandokht was picked up and developed by French orientalist François de la Croix, appearing within a collection of stories based on eastern folklore. Only De la Croix, perhaps because of commercial reasons, as Chinese exoticism was in fashion at the time, found his inspiration in the work of the Persian Ganyavı́, yes, but set the action in China instead, where the “daughter of Tur”, became princess “Turandot”. It was on the story by De la Croix, and not the original Persian tale, that Carlo Gozzi based his fable “Turandot” in 1762. This version by the famous Venetian dramaturgist was so successful, that even Friedrich Schiller himself became enamoured by it and, in 1801, it was put to the stage in Weimar, this time, turned into a tragedy… Eventually, after four different pens spilled their creativity using the origi- nal work of a Persian poet whom few remember, librettists Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simon, the fourth and ;ifth pen respectively to be placed upon the princess, created the version we now know today, and which made almost all other versions be forgotten by the hearts of the general public: the libretto for the homonymous (and posthumous) work composed by Giacomo Puccini. The genius from Lucca began to score Turandot in 1921, but on 10 October 1924, with a piece that he was yet to ;inish, he was diagnosed with throat cancer - a bad joke played by fate onto someone who made, makes, and will make the world sing forever. He sadly died a few weeks after his diagnosis in a surgery in Brus- sels. Following the Maestro’s wishes, the draft for the end of the piece (around 36 pages) is handed over to composer Riccardo Zandonai, so that he can ;inish it, but Tonio Puccini, son of Giacomo, objects, and commissions Franco Alfano so that he may ;inish the work of his late father. Many are critical of Alfano, some even mock him - with that typical sarcasm of those who always think themselves to be better than others until it’s their turn to prove it - making fun of the effort he put into inishing Turandot. It’s true that we will never know what Zandonai might have done, even less so Puccini, but what we do know is what poor Alfano did, who, likely with tears in his eyes after the death of his friend and mentor, had to face the gargantuous historical task of completing his work. Franco Alfano wasn’t a genius the way Puccini was however, and even if he had been, he was never the original author. And that’s that. While we’re at it, let’s remember that Luciano Berio too tried his luck at writing a new ending… So, only Puccini - how obvious - would have been able to ;inish his own work in a way we would all have liked. He was never able to do it, so let’s leave all that useless polemic behind, and dedicate ourselves to squeezing the most we can out of this un;inished, and un- ;inish-able, composition, a precursor of what would have surely been a revolu- tion in Giacomo Puccini’s style of writing. We will never know how far his hungry musical curiosity would have taken him but, in Turandot, one can intuit a lot of the Puccini that would have come next: a restless composer who, wherever his evolution would have taken him, would have never given up on melody. Anyway, today, fourteen centuries after the true “daughter of Turan” lived, more than eight hundred years after the original poem that immortalised her came to light, and in spite of there having been many different hands shaping it, the story of Turandot continues to fascinate us. Motivation In this version for the ORW, the theatre’s artistic director asked me to end the show - the way Toscanini did the day of its premiere - with Liù’s death. That made me very keen, as that request gave me the chance to put my personal “adieu” to Giacomo Puccini to the stage, a man who has gifted me with so many emotions and successes - and will surely continue to gift me more - throughout my international career. I remember as if it were yesterday when, as part of my debut in Tosca - in Torre del Lago Puccini, 1995 - I went on a private visit of the Casa Puccini and broke down into tears the instant I touched his cofin. This ending “a-la-Tosca”, without the sexual and musical turbulence of the ;inal duo, opens up the possibility of returning to the piece’s fairytale-like origins, to the poetic spirit of Nezamı́ Ganyavı́, to Carlo Gozzi’s tragicomedy, or put differently, it allows for the return to the fantastical, the fable, and its subsequent moral which resides within Liù’s realisation “Who has put so much strength in your heart?” asks Turandot - “Love!” answers the slave. I love working with children, the best actors a director can dream of, so taking on the staging of the show as a fable was the perfect excuse to have them on as much as possible. A sort of timeless group of children who, together with their teacher, put to use what they’ve learnt during class, building a castle out of Lego, dressing the teacher in the Mandarin’s clothes, etc - things that will become concrete during later scenes, where the imagination of man becomes reality. In that sense, it is important to emphasise the characters of Mandarin-Teacher, who is brie;ly suggested as being a narrator-type ;igure, a ;igure so important in the majority of fairytales, and those of Ping, Pong and Pang, inspired by the Commedia dell’arte. Taking advantage of the carte blanche given to me by Gozzi, and of the children’s imaginary game, the three “masks" are actors, hired by the Teacher, speci;ically so they perform Pantalone, Arlecchino and the Dottore for the children. The three of them, once fully inhabiting the fantastical world of the story later on, exchange their Commedia dell’ Arte costumes for Chinese garbs, appropriate to their ranks, in order to take part in the enigma ceremony. Now, according to the Real Academia Española’s dictionary, a fable is a “Brief ;ictitious story, in prose or verse, with didactical intentions, which are frequently manifested as part of a ;inal moral”. That would be why the genre is often associated with children’s pedagogy, although many fables are of such psychological violence that it is dif;icult to explain their connection to the age of innocence. While we’re on the subject of the supposed educational aspects of fairy- tales, if there is one tale whose modernity is overwhelming, that would have to be Turandot: 1The princess fears physical love - with everything it represents - and that is why she shakes in front of the impetuous charge of masculine sensual- ity. She uses the event of a rape, suffered by one of her ancestors - 1000 years ago - as an excuse to hate all men, which brings her to experiencing the presence of 2her suitors as if they were potential “rapists”, in the sense given by Hilmann to the word “Someone who, forcefully, penetrates the defensive pseudo-security of the feminine, disarming her”. Puccini and his librettists, modern and sensible men, having understood the concept perfectly, transmitted into the piece the laceration that is suffered by a woman when she is forced to live through that act of “surrendering to man”, as a loss of her independence. That is why the princess who did not hesitate to kill her male suitors in order to face her demons, needs, ironically, to sacri;ice a different feminine presence, Liù, in order for her to accept that side of her which she so desperately refutes. On the other end, Calaf - who doesn’t fall in love with her but instead becomes “enchanted” with her - is ready to use all of his sensual and sexual magnetism in order to obtain what he really wants: a kingdom that may give him back his princely status. In this sense, “Nessun Dorma” is less of a love song, and more of a war-cry, with the sense of a pride wounded by a kind of defeat, a pride that sees the arrival of dawn as a triumph in its plans for redemption: “Vincerò!” The way I see it, Turandot, with its plot rich in freudian nuances - it isn’t a coincidence that this perennial story ;inds its true strength in the 1920s, a time when modern psychoanalysis asserts itself as a tool of knowledge - was the “last drop in the cup” of a Puccini who’d always been aware of the feminine.